**4. Discussion and Conclusions**

There are complex relationships among various geographical scales, and scales and processes interact and influence each other. In this study, PLES coupling coordination degree on the administrative-unit and grid scales were analyzed by multiscale fusion. It contained the administrative-unit scale of PLES function information, reflected the macrobackground of development, and focused on the microlevel of PLES coordination performance, integrating the advantages of the two kinds of scales in order to understand the space–time characteristics of coordinated PLES development. The main conclusions are as follows:

In general, production land and ecological land in Ningbo were continuously occupied by human activities from 2010 to 2018. The industrial production space had a small increase; agricultural-production space occupied a large area, and the level of agricultural development was affected. The PLES coupling coordination degree analysis on the grid scale showed that, from 2010 to 2018, the lowest and lower suitability areas of ecological space in Ningbo increased. Land ecological suitability was seriously affected by urban expansion, and its ecological value was reduced. The near-uncoordinated area of PLES suitability considerably increased by 75.82%. PLES developed towards the trend of being uncoordinated. According to sustainable development on the administrative-unit scale, all counties and districts in Ningbo in 2010 and 2018 were under the near-uncoordinated state, and the sustainable development level of PLES was low. Multiscale coupling analysis showed that the PLES in Ningbo was in less conflict on the whole, but with economic development, the coupling coordination degree of PLES was also damaged and developing towards the uncoordinated direction. From the perspective of space, violent conflict areas of PLES in 2010 were mainly concentrated in Zhenhai. In 2018, this increased to 4.01%, and shifted to the west of Ningbo and the south of Yuyao.

The available research on the methods of quantitative recognition of spatial conflicts more focus on the single scale based on administrative unit, but the PLES conflicts between microcosmic grid scale receives less attention. Considering the important scale problems of the geographical study, PLES coupling coordination degree also has scale dependence. The quantitative research on the grid scale and multi-scale fusion method should be the future of spatial conflicts. It is therefore essential to analyze the spatial conflicts of PLES on different geographical scales. This study established different scales of a PLES coupling coordinated development degree evaluation index system, namely, the administrative-unit scale, grid-unit scale, and multiscale integration, and enriched the methods of multiscale fusion conflict diagnosis. However, the mechanism of multiscale fusion is complex and requires further study.

**Author Contributions:** G.L. and J.F. contributed to all aspects of this work; D.J. conducted data analysis and G.L. wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by a grant Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA19040305), Youth Innovation Promotion Association (Grant No. 2018068) and Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. E0V00112YZ).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the author.

**Acknowledgments:** We greatly thank MDPI English service for the editing assistance to the paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


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